Worklog - The Giant Flaming Bear

5/11/07 - 5/15/07

I decided that one of the coolest units (besides the pirate of course) the Giant Flaming Bear, needed a makeover. Currently, he sort of looks like a big scary badger.

Looks like he got hit with a shovel while playing basket ball. No es bueno.

So I drew up a completely new version. I tried to make it look as scary as possible yet still have the cute flammable charm of the Badger Bear.

Ahh much better!! Actually looks like a bear this time.

Next it was time to bust out a full serving of 3dstudio and fried chicken. The chicken was for me, the 3dstudio was for the bear.

I started on his head, I wanted it to have a lot of expression and not be lame like the rotting pile of pixel flesh that was the first bear.



A great start! I wanted to make him seem really fuzzy this time around, that way when I light him on fire he will really have that "pyro with a flamethrower" appeal. I added a lot of 2d planes for extra fuzz to accomplish this effect. They are marked in red.



Finally I finished the bear, and added some more fuzz planes.



I then proceeded to punch myself in the face over and over again, a process otherwise known as UVW unwrapping. All those fuzz planes need their own mapping, meaning this took forever.



This annoying process helps me paint a texture directly on to the model's surface. Which brings me to the next step, the texture. I opened up photoshop, turned on some Miguel Migs and prepared for a long and arduous journey in Wacom induced color and flaming fuzzyness.

After a lot of very fuzzy fur drawing I had the base texture done.



Now all I had to do was work on the 2d fuzz planes. I added a bit more detail as well and came up with the final bear...



Not a bad final result if I do say so myself.

Stacks up a lot better against the old badger bear! I can't wait to light this bad ass on fire and see how he looks in the game! But first I have to rig and animate him...

It was now time to assign bones to the Bear and then connect the Bear's mesh to the bones with weights.

I started off defining the bone structure of the bear mesh.



I put a lot of joints near the feet, that area of the bear suffered the most on the first attempt, making his walk look very awkward.

I then connected the mesh to the bones with 3dstudio's Skin modifier. It makes the bear look all colorful, with colors that almost resemble fire. It was a small preview into the fiery end of the GFB. I couldn't wait!



Once the rigging was complete, I went about setting him up in a bad ass "I'm going to eat your face" pose to make sure everything looked right when it was bent and moved around. (I also drew in some fire. Because let's face it at this point I'm getting pretty anxious. I want my flaming bear of death damn it!)



The next step now is to animate. Which is another long, involved process. I counted up how many animations he needed. I came up with 2 idle animations, a walk animation, 2 attack animations, and his special animation for when he does his AOE fire damage ring.

I added all the animations and had the final bear ready to go! I plugged him into the game and greatly anticipated the fight ahead of me!







And that's the Giant Flaming Bear's new model in game! Hope you enjoyed this worklog!